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"Hold on at all Costs." Air enthusiasts, greeting the surrender as a historic achievement of all-out air warfare, were quick to recall Winston Churchill's remark before Congress in May, that the idea of bombing Germany into submission was "worth trying." Soberer heads recognized this as a victory of air power, but a victory won under laboratory conditions. The island fell because it was possible to isolate it completely from supporting bases on the mainland. This was the decisive factor, not the sheer weight of bombs. Malta in three years of war had taken many times the weight of bombs dropped on the Italian outposts; it still stood because its supply lines were never severed.
Said Major General James H. Doolittle: "In simple terms, if you destroy what a man has and remove the possibility of his bringing more in, then in due course of time it becomes impossible for him to defend himself."
The attack on Pantelleria was a valuable lesson in modern military tactics. The conclusive effect of air bombardment plus sea blockade was proved. Further proof came when other tinier and also isolated islands fell. Bomb-shaken Lampedusa gave up to a startled R.A.F. flight-sergeant, Sidney Cohen, when his torpedo plane made an emergency landing. Linosa Avith 140 troops surrendered when the British destroyer Nubian appeared. Lampione soon joined the parade.
But there were other lessons:
> The garrison at Pantelleria, told to "hold the line" by Mussolini, did so with commendable valor, an indication that the universally maligned and notoriously misled Italian troops will not necessarily wilt away before the first invasion troops.
> The conquest of larger, blockade-free Sicily, next logical step on the way to Rome, will be no pushover, even though Allied bombers based on Pantelleria and nearby Lampedusa can have an umbrella of fighter escorts. Early this week Flying Fortresses plastered three of Sicily's major airdromes, while British Fleet units moved in closer to the Sicilian mainland.
"Happy Birthday to You." These facts, a warning to the overoptimistic among the Allies and some scant balm for the crushed Italian ego, did not make the conquest of the first territory within metropolitan Italy any more palatable to the war-sick, disorganized and frustrated Italian people. Mussolini waited 24 hours before officially announcing the capitulation, claiming that Italian airmen were having "great successes" and finally that Pantelleria had been turned into a "gigantic volcano." Italians did not miss the fact that the defeat came exactly three years and one day after Mussolini had led Italy into war against France and Britain. They remembered that he had boasted of "8,000,000 bayonets" ready to enforce the Fascist will, had led them to expect easy victory within three or four months.